Daily Archives: September 17, 2012

Just to have it out there in case people ask: My 2013 public appearance schedule is very sparse at the moment, by intention. I don’t know how many of you folks have been keeping track of these things like I do, but basically for the last three years I’ve had a travel schedule that meant I was traveling close to a week out of every month, and some months — May in 2011 and June this year — I was on the road more often than I was home.

It’s been great, and great for my career, and it’s been totally worth it. But it’s also exhausting and disruptive to my writing schedule; at one point in the last couple of years I went from being a writer who goes places to someone who goes places and then tries to fit writing around that. Eventually that gets old. Dude, I’m tired, you know?

So for the past year (or more in some cases) I’ve been turning down 2013 invitations to conventions and book fairs and such, with an eye toward spending more time at home, staying focused and doing a whole bunch of writing. Not just science fiction novels — although, clearly, I’m going to be doing that — but also other sorts of writing I want to try and/or get better at.

So at this moment, here’s what my 2013 appearance schedule looks like:

Nothing.

And now, because this is how these things work, the fine print:

1. I’ll be at Immortal Confusion in January and may even participate in a little bit of programming, because programming head Dave Klecha is friend of mine and also, dude, check out the Guest of Honor lineup. That said, what I’ll really mostly be doing there is hanging out with friends in the bar.

2. I will be at the Nebula Weekend in San Jose in May, because I will still be President of SFWA at that point.

3. I’m likely to go to Worldcon in San Antonio at the end of August, because Worldcon. My current plan for that is to do very limited programming, if I do any at all.

4. I have let Tor know that if they want/need me to do promotion around The Human Division in 2013, that I would do it, because, and here’s a pro tip, you don’t leave your publisher hanging if you can at all avoid it. So there’s a possibility I might be doing stuff around the hardcover release date, sometime in mid-May. That said, there’s nothing planned at the moment.

Other than that, the travel I have planned for 2013 — and I’m not saying I do have travel planned for 2013 — will be as a normal human being, i.e., I’m not going to announce it to the world. So, for example, I may show up at a convention, but if I do I’m there to see friends and to enjoy myself, not be a performing monkey. Alternately, if I do travel on business, it’s likely to be the sort of business where I have a meeting with a couple of people about future projects, not the sort of business where I stand in front of a room of people and try to entertain them.

But as noted before, my real plan at this point is to stay home, relax a bit, and enjoy long stretches of time to write. And who knows? Maybe this time, that’s what will actually happen! One may hope.

A reminder to all and sundry that in just a little under a month from this very day, I will be in the Washington, DC area for the purpose of being the Author Guest of Honor at Capclave, a fine and lovely science fiction and fantasy convention in Gaithersburg. At said convention, I will do readings! Be on panels! Have a kaffeklatch! Do an interview/dialogue/rant-filled bellow fest with Editor Guest of Honor Nick Mamatas! Here’s the preliminary programming schedule.

(I’ll note the programming people did a fine job of putting me on interesting things, considering that when they sent me the schedule and asked me what I wanted to be on, my response was “bwuh?” It is to their credit that they put me on cool stuff, rather than having me be the sole member of a panel entitled “When Guests of Honor are Lazy and Uncommunicative: A Case Study.” Bless you, Capclave programming people. You are better people than I am. I mean, obviously. Also, I may ultimately show up on one or two more things; we’ll see.)

I’ve been looking forward to coming to Capclave for a while now. It’s got a strong crew of participants this year and has an excellent reputation as being a place where good conversation happens. My plan is simply not to lower their standards. Also, for those of you who care about these sorts of things, it’s my last scheduled appearance in the DC-Baltimore area for a while, so if you wanted to see me, this would be the time. This is also my last scheduled public appearance anywhere for 2012, I believe.

Coming back around to Nick Mamatas for a moment, I’ll note that a while back Nick had asked Capclave what their policy was regarding harassment; the con responded and Nick has posted the policy on his LiveJournal. I recommend folks wander over there and have a look. Both Nick and I have decided that, should anyone decide to go out of their way to be a harassing assbag, we will express our displeasure at that person quite publicly. So please, don’t be that person! Instead, be one of the awesome people who will make Capclave awesome yet again this year.